BBC Caves To Bigotry Charge

[Guardian, Peter Salmon, BBC Chief Creative Officer] A snail could crawl the entire length of the Great Wall of China in just slightly more time than the 200 years it will take for women to be equally represented in parliament. That was just one of a series of striking statistics from the Equality and Human Rights Commission in their Sex and Power report published last week.

It added that women hold just 11% of FTSE directorships, with the judiciary and others also strongly criticised. At the BBC, the figures are a bit better – almost 38% of all senior managers are women – but it does bring into sharp focus the challenge the whole media industry is facing to improve diversity among its workforce.

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We seem to be moving in the right direction, increasing opportunities for people from ethnic minority backgrounds at most levels.

We will transfer large numbers of staff from London but we will also recruit many new faces – a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to add something substantially new to our gene pool of talent, to change the BBC’s DNA a little.